New Zealand, US may have spied on McClatchy reporter

Concern over government surveillance of journalists has
washed up on the faraway shores of New Zealand, with a report in the country's Sunday Star this week asserting that the military there,
with help from U.S. intelligence, spied on an investigative journalist who had
been critical of its activities in Afghanistan.

The report alleged that New Zealand's Defence Force was
monitoring the phone records of freelance journalist Jon Stephenson, who was working
for American news service McClatchy and other news outlets when his records
were intercepted. New Zealand and the United States are party to a five-country
agreement on sharing intelligence information.

McClatchy today wrote a letter to James
Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, demanding clarification of
whether the U.S. played a role in collecting or using data on Stephenson. "We
regard any targeted collection of the metadata of our journalists as a serious
interference with McClatchy's constitutional rights to gather and report the
news," the letter states.

The Sunday Star
report alleged that the New Zealand military gained access to "who Stephenson
had phoned and then who those people had phoned, creating what the sources
called a 'tree' of the journalist's associates." In its letter, McClatchy
expressed concern that this would include other journalists working for the
agency as well as editors in Washington, D.C.

The letter also expressed alarm that the U.S. may have
assisted in the "retaliatory monitoring" of a journalist. New Zealand Defense Force
Chief Rhys Jones accused Stephenson of fabricating details of reports published
in 2010 and 2011 about the military's mishandling of prisoners in Afghanistan.
According to news reports, the accusation led Stephenson to sue for defamation,
a case that resulted in a hung jury this month. Stephenson also claimed an
active officer made death threats against him in 2011 because of his critical
stories, according to a Radio
New Zealand report published today. Stephenson could not be reached for
comment.

Wellington has rejected allegations that Stephenson was a
subject of surveillance and of any U.S. involvement. A U.S. official also
denied the claims on Monday, according to The
Associated Press. Prime Minister John Key said Monday that it is possible
for reporters to get caught in surveillance nets when the United States spies
on enemy combatants.

McClatchy, citing past assurances by President Barack Obama
that U.S. surveillance efforts are "carefully circumscribed" for national
security, said such assurances "cannot be squared" with the reports out of New
Zealand.

Compounding concerns about the New Zealand military's
targeting of journalists, the Sunday Star
reported that a confidential military training manual drafted in 2003 lists
investigative journalists as one of the top threats to state security--up there
with terrorists and hostile foreign intelligence groups. A military official in
New Zealand acknowledged the existence of the manual on Monday, referring to it
as "inappropriate and heavy-handed," and ordered a revision to remove any
references to journalists, news reports said.

Several key figures in New Zealand expressed dismay over the
spying allegations. Member of Parliament Peter Dunne tweeted on
Sunday that state surveillance of journalists is "appalling and unacceptable."
And a former military chief, Bruce Ferguson, defended the Sunday Star reporter, Nicky Hager, and investigative journalism as
a whole in an interview
with Radio New Zealand: "[Hager] gets a lot of it right, he gets some of it
wrong but he keeps everyone honest, and I think that's probably a very healthy
thing to do. And if you don't have those sorts of people, you're getting into
autocracy and dictatorship, and I'd hate to see us go that way."

News reports say New Zealand is expected
to pass an expansive
surveillance bill that would allow the government to monitor private
communication of its citizens in the name of national security.

Sumit Galhotra is the research associate for CPJ's Asia program. He served as CPJ's inaugural Steiger Fellow and has worked for CNN International, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch. He has reported from London, India, and Israel and the Occupied Territories, and specializes in human rights and South Asia.